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Stan Lee's cameos

Appearances47 entries

The man who co-created most of these characters spent twenty-five years turning up inside the films made from them, in a crowd, behind a counter, or on a wall.

It begins in 1989 as a favour in a television film and ends as an institution. He is a jury foreman, a hot dog vendor, a librarian who hears nothing, a postman who cannot pronounce Stark, an astronaut telling his life story to cosmic observers, and finally a photograph on an advert for a carpet cleaning company.

These appearances cross every line this catalogue draws. They run through Marvel Studios, the Fox films, both Sony continuities and the older unconnected adaptations, which is why this set belongs to no single story and carries no franchise colour of its own.

There is a shape to them. Early on he is an extra who happens to be famous, given no line and no look at the camera. From 2008 he is written in, given a joke, and placed where the hero is already standing. From 2017 the films begin treating the appearances as one continuous character, and after 2018 he stops being a person in the room at all and becomes a picture in it.

Show detailsHow these are named

Where a source records what the on-screen credit actually said, this catalogue uses it exactly: Stan the Man in Thor, Waterhose Man in The Last Stand, Man in Times Square in Spider-Man 3, Willie Lumpkin in Fantastic Four, Himself wherever he plays himself.

Most cameos were never credited under a role name. For those, the designation line describes the part as the source describes it, and is not a claim about what appears in the credits.

Show detailsWhat is not here

Two cameos were filmed and cut, so they are not appearances: a police officer who finds a body in Blade in 1998, and a man watching the news in Kick-Ass in 2010. Neither has been released.

Several later films refer to him without him appearing. A look-alike was written into the screenplay of Spider-Man: No Way Home but not filmed, and the film instead uses his birthday as a taxi number. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 intended a character to be modelled on him before his death. WandaVision puts his birth date on a licence plate, Loki puts a face that resembles him in a courtroom portrait, What If…? mentions the pizza parlour named after him, and Morbius writes his catchphrase on a wall. Those are tributes rather than cameos, and a set of appearances should not quietly count them as one.

He also appears in work this catalogue does not cover, including the animated Big Hero 6 and the short film No Good Deed.

  1. The foreman of the jury

    Jury foreman

    The foreman of the jury at David Banner's trial, in a television film made eleven years before the first X-Men.

    This is where it starts, in 1989, and it does not look like a beginning. It is his first appearance in a Marvel film or television production in anything other than a narrator’s voice.

    First seen inThe Trial of the Incredible Hulk

  2. The hot dog vendor on the beach

    Hot dog vendor

    Working a hot dog stand on a beach when a United States senator crawls out of the sea with no clothes on.

    The first of them all, in 2000, eight years before Marvel Studios existed. Nothing about it announces a tradition: it is one shot of a man behind a cart, and the tradition was built on top of it afterwards.

    First seen inX-Men

  3. The man who pulls a girl out of the way

    Man in the crowd

    In the middle of Spider-Man's first fight with the Green Goblin, he pulls a child clear of falling debris.

    No line, no look at the camera. Of all of them this is the one that behaves most like an ordinary extra, which is why it took years for most viewers to notice it was there.

    Show detailsThe scene that was cut

    A deleted scene has him as a street vendor trying to sell Peter Parker sunglasses, saying they wore them in The X-Men. It was most likely cut because those films belonged to a different studio.

    First seen inSpider-Man

  4. The man saved from the bus

    Man at the crossing

    A man about to step into the road, stopped by a young Matt Murdock before a bus reaches him.

    It reverses the usual arrangement. Everywhere else he watches the hero work or gets in the way of it; here the film gives the child the job of saving the man who invented him.

    First seen inDaredevil

  5. The guard beside the other Hulk

    Security guard

    A security guard at Bruce Banner's laboratory, walking in step with Lou Ferrigno, who had played the Hulk on television.

    It is his first speaking part in a film based on one of his own characters, and he spends it next to the man who wore the green makeup for five years.

    First seen inHulk

  6. The same rescue, two years later

    Man in the crowd

    During Spider-Man's first fight with Doctor Octopus, he repeats the rescue he performed in the previous film, this time with a young woman.

    Doing it twice is what made it a habit rather than an accident. The gag from here on is that he is always in the crowd, in every crowd.

    Show detailsThe line that went to somebody else

    A blooper on the home release has him say that Spider-Man stole that kid’s sneakers. The scripted line was about a stolen pizza, and it stayed in the film, spoken by Donnell Rawlings instead.

    First seen inSpider-Man 2

  7. The face on the missing persons board

    Photograph on a missing persons board

    A photograph of him pinned to a board of missing people.

    He is not in the film. He is a picture of somebody the film says is gone, in the smallest and strangest appearance of the whole run.

    First seen inMan-Thing

  8. Willie Lumpkin, the postman

    Willie Lumpkin

    The mail carrier who greets the four as they walk into the Baxter Building, and the first time he plays a character he created himself.

    Everywhere else he is himself, or an unnamed man in a crowd. Here he is playing somebody out of his own comics, a postman he and Jack Kirby had put in the building in 1961.

    First seen inFantastic Four

  9. The man watering the lawn

    Waterhose Man

    A suburban neighbour watering his garden in a scene set twenty years earlier, when the water from his hose stops obeying him.

    Jean Grey is a child in this scene, and the water going up instead of down is the first thing anyone sees her do. Chris Claremont, who wrote the comics run this film draws on, is the neighbour standing beside him.

    First seen inX-Men: The Last Stand

  10. The man in Times Square

    Man in Times Square

    Standing next to Peter Parker in Times Square, reading the news ticker about Spider-Man, he says that one person can make a difference and walks away.

    It is the only time one of these appearances is written as advice. He delivers it, adds his other catchphrase, nuff said, and leaves Peter standing there with it.

    First seen inSpider-Man 3

  11. The guest who is not on the list

    Himself

    Turning up at Reed Richards and Susan Storm's wedding as himself, and being turned away by security for not being on the guest list.

    It is a joke he had made before, in print. In Fantastic Four Annual number 3 in 1965, the issue where the couple marry, he and Jack Kirby are refused at the door in exactly the same way.

    First seen inFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

  12. The man mistaken for Hugh Hefner

    Himself

    At a gala full of people who matter, Tony Stark greets him as Hef and keeps walking.

    It is the first one, and it sets the shape of all the others: he is placed where the hero is already looking, given a line that costs the scene nothing, and left there.

    Show detailsThe take that was not used

    A second version was filmed in which Stark realises his mistake and Lee answers, that is okay, I get this all the time. The theatrical cut keeps the shorter version. In 2008 Lee named this his favourite of his cameos to that point.

    First seen inIron Man

  13. The man who drinks the wrong bottle

    Hapless citizen

    He opens a soft drink that has Bruce Banner's blood in it, and becomes the clue that tells the army where Banner is hiding.

    This is the only cameo in the run that moves the plot. Everywhere else he is decoration the film can afford; here the gamma sickness of one unlucky drinker is what puts a bottling plant in Brazil on a map in Virginia.

    Show detailsThe other name in the film

    A character is named after him as well. Stanley Lieber, his own birth name, owns Stanley’s Pizza Parlor.

    First seen inThe Incredible Hulk

  14. The man mistaken for Larry King

    Guest mistaken for Larry King

    At the Stark Expo, in braces and a red shirt, he is greeted warmly by Tony Stark as somebody else entirely.

    The joke is the same one as two years earlier, told again on purpose. Stark is a man who does not look closely at anybody, and the gag works because the audience recognises the face he keeps failing to.

    First seen inIron Man 2

  15. The man with the pickup truck

    Stan the Man

    He ties a chain to Thor's hammer, drives off, and takes the bed of his own truck with him.

    Everyone in the crater is trying to lift the thing. He is the only one who brings equipment, and the only one whose equipment loses. Sitting in the wreckage he asks the crowd, did it work.

    Show detailsHow he is credited

    The credit reads Stan the Man, the nickname he had taken during the Silver Age of comics.

    First seen inThor

  16. The general who was expecting someone taller

    General

    A senior officer at a wartime ceremony, introduced to the wrong man and unimpressed by him.

    He says he thought he would be taller, which is a joke about a soldier and also about a reader who has only ever seen the character drawn.

    Show detailsWhat he did and did not invent

    Lee did not create Captain America. He did create the idea of the shield thrown as a weapon, and he brought the character back in the Silver Age and wrote most of his stories in that period.

    First seen inCaptain America: The First Avenger

  17. The man who is not impressed

    Chess player

    Interviewed on the street about the team that has just saved Manhattan, he says superheroes in New York, give me a break, and goes back to his chess game.

    The film needed one voice that was not amazed, and gave it to the man who spent fifty years asking readers to be amazed. It is the only cameo that argues with the film it is in.

    First seen inThe Avengers

  18. The librarian with the headphones

    School librarian

    A school librarian working through a fight between Spider-Man and the Lizard without noticing any of it, because he has headphones on.

    The library is destroyed around him and he walks out at the end still listening. It is the longest of the cameos in which he does nothing whatsoever.

    First seen inThe Amazing Spider-Man

  19. The judge who gives a ten

    Pageant judge

    Seen on a television monitor as a beauty pageant judge, entirely happy with what he is looking at.

    Two seconds on a screen inside a screen. It is the smallest of the Marvel Studios cameos and the clearest example of the rule they were following: he is never a character, he is a face the film cuts to.

    First seen inIron Man 3

  20. The passenger who plays along

    Kindly older man

    In the episode T.R.A.C.K.S., an older man who listens to the elaborate cover story Simmons is improvising and takes her side.

    It is his first appearance in the television half of this story, broadcast in February 2014. The joke is not on him for once: he is the only person in the carriage who has decided to be kind.

    First seen inAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

  21. The patient who lends his shoe

    Mental ward patient

    A patient in a psychiatric ward who hands Erik Selvig a shoe so he can demonstrate the Convergence, then wants it back.

    Selvig is the only man in the film who understands what is happening and the only one everybody has decided is mad. The cameo sits inside that joke rather than beside it: the audience in the ward is taking the lecture seriously.

    First seen inThor: The Dark World

  22. The guard who is going to be fired

    Smithsonian security guard

    A museum security guard who works out that the Captain America uniform has gone missing from the display, and knows exactly what that means for him.

    Oh man, I am so fired. Of all the lines he was given, this is the one that treats him as a working man with a shift and a supervisor rather than as a wink at the audience.

    First seen inCaptain America: The Winter Soldier

  23. The guest at the graduation

    Graduation guest

    In the audience at Peter Parker's graduation, watching him rush up for his diploma and saying he thinks he knows that guy.

    The last cameo in this particular continuity, which ended a year later when the character was handed back. It is also the closest any of them comes to breaking the fourth wall without actually doing it.

    First seen inThe Amazing Spider-Man 2

  24. The gentleman on Xandar

    Elderly gentleman on Xandar

    An older man in conversation with a much younger woman on a street on Xandar, watched through Rocket's scanner and written off as evidence that the planet is a mess.

    It is the first cameo set outside Earth, and the film treats it as proof he gets everywhere. His catchphrase, Excelsior, appears on the scanner rendered in Kree.

    Show detailsHow much of this he made

    Almost none of it. Apart from Groot, Ronan the Accuser and the Collector, the characters in this film are not his.

    First seen inGuardians of the Galaxy

  25. The man who wants the sports pages

    Man with the newspaper

    In the episode The Blitzkrieg Button, a man who asks Howard Stark whether he can borrow the sports section of his newspaper.

    Broadcast in January 1947 as far as the series is concerned, and January 2015 as far as the viewer is. It is the earliest point in the story where one of these appearances is placed.

    First seen inAgent Carter

  26. The officer on the wall of the precinct

    Police officer in a photograph

    A photograph of him in police uniform, hung on a commendation plaque in a New York precinct, and repeated across six Netflix series.

    He never appears in person in any of them. The plaque turns up in the middle of the final episode of Daredevil’s first season, and the same conceit recurs in Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher.

    Show detailsHe is given a name, eventually

    Iron Fist identifies the officer as Captain Irving Forbush, a name Marvel had used since 1955 for its own in-house joke. Jessica Jones then makes Forbush a lawyer with a firm called Forbush and Associates, and Luke Cage puts his advertising on a billboard: call Forbush, get what you deserve.

    Show detailsWhat the sources do and do not say

    The catalogue’s sources name the six series and the season one placement in Daredevil. They do not give an episode for each of the later series, so this entry does not claim one.

    First seen inDaredevil

  27. The veteran who tries the Asgardian liquor

    World War II veteran

    A war veteran at the victory party who insists that a man who landed at Omaha Beach can handle a drink from Thor, and is carried out shortly afterwards.

    He goes out muttering Excelsior. Lee said at the time that this was his favourite cameo, a title he later moved to X-Men: Apocalypse.

    First seen inAvengers: Age of Ultron

  28. The bartender inside Luis's story

    Bartender

    A bartender who exists only inside a story Luis is telling, encouraging a cousin to go and talk to a woman across the room.

    Luis narrates in a style where everybody speaks in his voice and nothing is quite reliable. Putting the cameo in there is the cleverest placement in the run: it is a cameo inside a piece of hearsay.

    First seen inAnt-Man

  29. The compere at the strip club

    Himself

    Announcing the next act at a strip club, in a film whose hero he had nothing to do with creating.

    Give it up for Chastity. The film is rated for adults and knows exactly how odd it is to put him in that room, which is most of the joke.

    First seen inDeadpool

  30. The courier who gets the name wrong

    FedEx postman

    A delivery man who brings Tony Stark the package that ends the film, and reads his name off the label as Tony Stank.

    The team has broken apart, the letter is an apology, and the last word of the scene is a mispronounced surname. It is the one cameo that is given the job of releasing the pressure at the end of a film.

    First seen inCaptain America: Civil War

  31. The couple watching the missiles

    Himself

    Standing outside with his wife Joan, watching the sky as every nuclear missile on Earth is launched at once.

    He said afterwards that this was his favourite of all of them, and the reason he gave was Joan. It is the only cameo the two of them share while both were alive.

    First seen inX-Men: Apocalypse

  32. The passenger on the bus

    Bus passenger

    A man reading Aldous Huxley on a city bus, entirely unaware of the fight going on around him.

    The book is The Doors of Perception, which is Huxley on mescaline and the closest thing the film has to a footnote about what it is doing. The joke is that the one man holding the explanation is the one man not looking.

    First seen inDoctor Strange

  33. The astronaut telling stories to the Watchers

    Astronaut

    Sitting on an asteroid in a spacesuit, telling a group of Watchers about his life, including his time as a delivery man.

    This is the scene that turned a running gag into a theory. If the same man is on Xandar, in a New York street and on an asteroid recounting all of it to cosmic observers, then the cameos are one character rather than forty.

    Show detailsThey leave without him

    He comes back after the credits, still talking, while the Watchers walk away tired of him. He points out that they are his only ride home. The Watchers, and Ego, are among the few characters in these films he did co-create.

    First seen inGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

  34. Gary, the neighbour at the window

    Gary

    A neighbour named Gary who leans out of his window to shout at Spider-Man for making a scene in the street below.

    Don’t make me come down there, you punk. It is one of the few cameos where the character has a name and neighbours of his own, and he uses it to threaten the hero of the film.

    First seen inSpider-Man: Homecoming

  35. The barber on Sakaar

    The Grandmaster's barber

    A servant of the Grandmaster who cuts Thor's hair, holding the clippers that end the character's most recognisable feature.

    The haircut is a real turn in the film: Thor loses the hair, the hammer and the eye across two hours, and the first of the three goes to a cameo. He is delighted about it.

    First seen inThor: Ragnarok

  36. The limousine driver

    Limousine driver

    The driver of the limousine carrying the six teenagers the series is named after.

    A straight cameo in a series about children discovering that their parents are the villains. None of these characters are his.

    First seen inRunaways

  37. The man who takes the chips

    Casino patron

    A gambler in a Busan casino who quietly collects the winnings T'Challa has walked away from.

    T’Challa leaves the table because there is a fight starting. The cameo is the person who notices that nobody is coming back for the money.

    First seen inBlack Panther

  38. The bus driver

    School bus driver

    Driving a school bus through Manhattan when a spaceship arrives, and asking the children what is wrong with them for staring at it.

    What is the matter with you kids, you never seen a spaceship before. The line works because in this city, by this point, the honest answer is that they have.

    First seen inAvengers: Infinity War

  39. The face on the wall

    Graffiti portrait

    A portrait of him painted on a wall, seen for a moment as Domino flies past it.

    He was alive when the film opened in May 2018 and dead by the November.

    Show detailsThe version with the letters added

    Once Upon a Deadpool, the reduced cut released that December, adds the letters RIP to the same painting.

    First seen inDeadpool 2

  40. The man in the Warhol painting

    Man in a painting

    Not a person on screen at all, but a face in a painting modelled on Andy Warhol's The Shot Marilyns.

    By 2018 the appearances no longer require him to be there. This one is a canvas on a wall, and it still counts, because the point of the gag had become recognition rather than performance.

    First seen inCloak & Dagger

  41. The man whose car is shrunk

    Pedestrian

    A pedestrian who watches the Wasp shrink his car to the size of a toy and takes it philosophically.

    Well, the sixties were fun, but now I am paying for it. The joke needs the audience to know roughly how old the man saying it is, which is true of almost none of the others.

    First seen inAnt-Man and the Wasp

  42. The man walking his dog

    Dog walker

    A man out with his dog who somehow hears the conversation between Eddie Brock and the creature living inside him, and tells him not to give up on Anne.

    He should not be able to hear any of it, and the film does not explain how he can. The symbiote asks who that guy is, which is the closest thing to an answer anyone gets.

    Show detailsThe last one he saw released

    Venom opened in October 2018. Lee died the following month, so this is the final cameo released in his lifetime.

    First seen inVenom

  43. The man who sells Miles the suit

    Costume shop owner

    A shopkeeper who sells Miles Morales a Spider-Man costume and refuses to take it back, telling him it always fits, eventually.

    Released a month after his death. The directors said they wanted him to have a real moment here rather than a passing one, because he was so much a part of what the film was about.

    Show detailsThe other places he is in it

    He turns up again in a few frames of a passing train, and his glasses appear after the credits in a tribute to him and to Steve Ditko.

    First seen inSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

  44. The man on the train, reading his own lines

    Himself

    Riding a Los Angeles train in 1995, rehearsing his lines from the screenplay of Mallrats, he catches Carol Danvers looking and smiles at her.

    Released four months after his death, it is the first of the posthumous appearances and the only one where he plays himself doing his own job.

    Show detailsThe logo that year

    The Marvel Studios logo at the head of the film was rebuilt out of his cameos and ends on the words Thank You Stan. Lee did not create Carol Danvers, though he did co-create the first character to carry the name Captain Marvel.

    First seen inCaptain Marvel

  45. The driver in 1970

    Driver, 1970

    Digitally made young again, driving past a military base in 1970 and shouting make love, not war.

    The last one. The scene puts a digital recreation of his wife Joan in the car beside him, as she looked that year.

    Show detailsThe other trace of him in the film

    His dog, Charlotte, is named on the memorial wall Scott Lang reads. This is the final Marvel film of any kind to carry a Stan Lee cameo.

    First seen inAvengers: Endgame

  46. The face on the magazine

    Man on a magazine cover

    A magazine with his face on it, which Venom tidies back into place.

    Three years after his death the appearance has shrunk to an object on a table, straightened by a creature who has no idea whose face that is.

    First seen inVenom: Let There Be Carnage

  47. The face on the Stanlee Steamer advert

    Stanlee Steamer advertisement

    His photograph on an advert for a carpet cleaning firm called Stanlee Steamer, promising a friendly neighbourhood cleaner.

    Five years after the last real cameo the joke has become a piece of set dressing: a pun on a cleaning company, his own birth year printed on the advert, and archival footage of him in the closing montage.

    First seen inDeadpool & Wolverine

Sources

Facts last checked on Sep 8, 2026